These lines, of course, point to the Acton who was the lifelong friend of Dollinger and fought, side by side with the Bavarian scholar, the promulgation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, at the Vatican Council of 1870. But while Dollinger broke with the Church, Lord Acton never did. That was what made the extraordinary interest of conversation with him. Here was a man whose denunciation of the crimes and corruption of Papal Rome--of the historic Church, indeed, and the clergy in general--was far more unsparing than that of the average educated Anglican. Yet he died a devout member of the Roman Church in which he was born; after his death it was revealed that he had never felt a serious doubt either of Catholic doctrine or of the supernatural mission of the Catholic Church; and it was to a dearly loved daughter on her death-bed that he said, with calm and tender faith, "My child, you will soon be with Jesus Christ." All his friends, except the very few who knew him most intimately, must, I think, have been perpetually puzzled by this apparent paradox in his life and thought. Take the subject of Biblical criticism. I had many talks with him while I was writing _Robert Elsmere_, and was always amazed at his knowledge of what Liddon would have called "German infidel" books. He had read them all, he possessed them all, he knew a great deal about the lives of the men who had written them, and he never spoke of them, both the books and the writers, without complete and, as it seemed to me, sympathetic tolerance. I remember, after the publication of the dialogue on "The New Reformation," in which I tried to answer Mr. Gladstone's review of _Robert Elsmere_ by giving an outline of the history of religious inquiry and Biblical criticism from Lessing to Harnack, that I met Lord Acton one evening on the platform of Bletchley station, while we were both waiting for a train. He came up to me with a word of congratulation on the article. "I only wish," I said, "I had been able to consult you more about it." "No, no," he said. "_Votre siège est faite_! But I think you should have given more weight to so-and-so, and you have omitted so-and-so." Whereupon we walked up and down in the dusk, and he poured out that learning of his, in that way he had--so courteous, modest, thought-provoking--which made one both wonder at and love him.